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Crappy film

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Jane Eyre is a great book and its themes are still relevant today. This is one of many, many film versions. This particular film is made for TV and aired in 1997. This hits and misses in almost equal measure. It gets the relationship between Jane and Mr Rochester fairly right, and the chemistry between them mirrors the novel. Some of the Gothic bits are frightening in a restrained way and Helen Burns is handled well too. It's fairly well acted, although whoever played Mr Rochester needs some anger management lessons. The script has some intelligence and translates some of the themes of the book, but not all. Bertha is mishandled, Mr Rochester overacts, Jane is not as strong as the character in the book, the first 10 chapters are rushed and the film fails to reach the emotional heights of the novel thanks to rushed writing. Seeing it aside from the novel, it's a decently written but blandly filmed drama movie which you may not remember you even saw. So, a mixed bag without a doubt. Overall.... I wouldn't bother.6/10

How does the scoring system work when this seems so disliked but still ends up with 7.1? Anyway, what a mess. Mr Rochester especially, what should be a mysterious, sexy, grumpy, deep character is an annoying shouty needy idiot. He's scary, and not in a good way. If you saw this you would never read the book or see any other adaptations, you'd think anyone who liked it must be a moron.Need to write a few more lines. Don't watch this adaptation whatever you do. Avoid. Watch something else.Mock anyone who says its good. Complain to any TV station that shows it. You will notice the actor who shouted his way through his performance was never in anything else again. Well, if you do such a terrible Mr Rochester and that's what you deserve.

I like this Ciarian Hinds/Samantha Morton version better than the 96 version with William Hurt as Mr. Rochester.Now...the book is LONG...so every movie has to leave out lots of the story...I have't seen a Jane Eyre series, but, like the Pride & Prejudice series (versus P&P movies) it would cover Jane Eyre's story much better.That said, I like Ciaran Hinds as the edgy, volatile Mr. Rochester in this version. William Hurt is a bit too tame and too "nice". The Jane Eyre character is tough. She can deal with a few raw edges in her boss/love interest. After handling all the abuse in her childhood, she has incredible inner strength, which we usually see in Morton's performance. And I unfairly didn't think Samantha Morton could play Jane Eyre, simply because she plays a bland young woman in "Emma". (Her character in EMMA, however, is SUPPOSED to be a bit bland and dull...). Morton does not quite match Hinds' intensity till the end...when I do believe her "Jane Eyre" character's refusal to go.Mr. Hinds is top rate Mr. Rochester all the way through...and Ms. Morton grows stronger as she goes along...It's a good version of the book to find and watch.

I love watching films that exist in many incarnations, because often you can get more out of every version. There's a sort of circumlocution of the narrative that you can achieve with multiple versions. That's true even if the film itself is horrible. This one is. Its bad because the book depends on accretive structure. Its all about symmetries. Jane's character and all her desires are shaped by what we see early on, so we can understand the love we encounter toward the end. If you toss out all that structure, essentially you make Jane inhuman. You might get the message somehow that the love is intense, but you will not experience it, internalize it.Its also wrong because of all the shouting. Everyone shouts, including the housekeeper! This is not the character of the times, nor the language, which is distinctly modern. I wonder what they were thinking, that there was a tradeoff of charm for understanding or familiarity?It seems that most commentors focus on the nature of Rochester, how he played, whether as a broken man who is a pushy bully, or whether as a haunted, quiet basket case. If you're on Bronte's side, you'll prefer the more complex basket case. What works is that their breaks compliment and heal.My own focus (and that of the author, for what it is worth) is on Jane. Watching many depictions of Jane is something of a thrill. Often the actress who is cast has as her chief attribute something that the filmmaker considers as an open innocence.Jane came from a small world of books only. She created herself in spite of what she saw, excepting the essential Miss Temple. (Miss Temple's abandonment of Jane for marriage is key to the story.) Rochester has all of the opposite: extremely worldly but with no sense of self, no tools to invent himself. Jane is all story and Rochester is all lack of story, his story.Anyway, this Jane is Samantha Morton. She does have an amazing demeanor. Her face really does project much of what we imagine Jane is. Firm, settled, strong, simple, and toward the end absolutely committed. We know from that face the whole story: the immense availability of character, the deep, deep heart (oh why cut the Helen Burns part?), the uncomplicated life template.Other actresses have done well with this too. But there's something about seeing a body so gaunt and sexless, but so yearning.It helps to know that Woody Allen cast her in a similar role, written for her in what I think is his most perfect movie. Following that Spielberg cast her in the pivotal role in his P K Dick/ Agatha Christie mystery. And following that, the experimental Winterbottom cast her in again a role that had Jane at the core. And all of that adds her Mary Queen of Scots in which you can still see our Jane.It also helps to know that if you've followed this Jane, you've seen her nude several times and you've watched her body fill out to normal human size. So you'll know the physical repression she had at the time, 19 years old.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.